Kayla’s Reviews > An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence > Status Update
Kayla
is 68% done
“…Afrikaans – the version of Dutch spoken by the Boer settlers. They were self-sufficient and isolationist, with a narrow view of the world. They held austere Protestant Calvinist beliefs and thought they had a duty to ‘civilise’ their black neighbours, just like Christians in the Confederate states of the US used a ‘religious’ imperative to justify their dominance over and enslavement of black people.
— Mar 01, 2026 08:03PM
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Kayla’s Previous Updates
Kayla
is 67% done
“The tight political grip of white settlers was maintained until relatively recently: Zimbabweans and South Africans had to wait until 1980 and 1994 respectively to enjoy full citizen rights and black majority rule.”
Read an article today that the Trump admin has a refugee program designated for white South Africans because of “racial discrimination” caused by black majority rule. The lack of knowledge…
— Mar 01, 2026 03:01PM
Read an article today that the Trump admin has a refugee program designated for white South Africans because of “racial discrimination” caused by black majority rule. The lack of knowledge…
Kayla
is 64% done
“The advocates for abolition had argued that if there were no buyers then the trade would immediately cease to exist. The slavers on the other hand insisted that it was the regular supply of enslaved people from Africa that sustained the external demand for them, so according to this counterintuitive argument the Africans themselves were primarily to blame for the persistence of the trade…”
— Mar 01, 2026 02:33PM
Kayla
is 59% done
“Yaa Asantewaa… being in her late sixties (elderly by the standards of the time), gathered Asante men around her and admonished them… ‘I will not pay one predawn [8£] to the governor. If you, the chiefs of Asante, are going to behave like cowards and not fight, you should exchange your loincloths for my undergarments…if you the men of Asante, will not go forward, then we will. We, the women, will.’”
— Mar 01, 2026 01:34PM
Kayla
is 58% done
“But the Anglo–Asante Wars continued for decades and although the Asante emerged victorious in some of these conflicts, the wars eventually reached a horrific conclusion in February 1874 when British troops marched into Kumasi and sacked the city. The treasury in the king’s stone-built palace was emptied, after which the royal compound was blown up. The remainder of the city was burned to the ground.”
— Mar 01, 2026 01:12PM
Kayla
is 52% done
“Father Conceição called Dombo a ‘most skilled wizard’ and wrote: ‘He was so wily and cunning that after being defeated by our arms he vanquished us with stratagems.’Changamire Dombo forced the Portuguese to acknowledge him as the ruler of Rozvi and pay him tributes, and his control of his mineral-rich lands became absolute.”
— Mar 01, 2026 08:58AM
Kayla
is 50% done
“The Rhodesian Front Party, an all-white party led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, censored all books and material on Great Zimbabwe from 1965 to 1980… Ian Smith’s government instructed its employees ‘that no official publication may state unequivocally that Great Zimbabwe was an African creation.’”
— Mar 01, 2026 06:42AM
Kayla
is 45% done
“…study commissioned by the French government in 2018. Its authors… estimated that a colossal 90 per cent of Africa’s cultural heritage is in the West, and they added their voices to calls for France to return objects it had acquired during the colonial era.”
— Mar 01, 2026 05:48AM
Kayla
is 43% done
“African elephants were larger… and provided ivory of a softer quality, which was more suitable for carving and making jewelry. Elephants had become extinct in China around 200 CE, so the Chinese were also keen to get their hands on ivory.”
There were originally elephants in China?? :ooo
— Feb 28, 2026 06:16PM
There were originally elephants in China?? :ooo
Kayla
is 41% done
“The only museum in an Arab state that examines the Arab slave trade is Bin Jelmood House in Qatar, where incidentally slavery was only abolished officially in 1952, and where the continual reliance on migrant labor in a system open to abuse has attracted much international criticism. The museum… opened in 2015…”
— Feb 28, 2026 08:32AM
Kayla
is 40% done
Okay this whole section on jihadism is interesting but this maybe is the best quote: “As the emir put it to me: ‘Certain social and economic conditions are fertile ground for breeding violent movements — be they religious extremists, ethnic militias or just criminal gangs. Religion simply becomes a rallying point and ideology, but the real discontent lies in politics.’”
— Feb 21, 2026 08:09AM
